Jay Harvey Upstage

  The '"musical mayor" of Indianapolis, Rob Dixon , reached out to his constituents Friday night Rob Dixon holds forth at the Kitchen. at the Jazz Kitchen , and his position was sustained by acclamation  over a long set that climaxed with his stroll around the venue playing a long solo that, by virtue of a microphone attached to his tenor sax, got heard by everyone and was reinforced in sync with the band. Like a deft politician, he managed to reach out to shake hands as he passed by one table after another.  The non-peripatetic personnel of Dixon's enlarged Triology included Reggie Bishop and Gary Mielke, keys; Brandon Meeks, bass, and Richard "Sleepy" Floyd, drums,with a special guest appearance by Vick Luna , trombone. They all stayed on the bandstand, but lifted the mood all along the way wherever Dixon wandered. The band opened with a  unified, powerful  pair of statements that included Dixon's "Ten Thousand Ships," the title alluding the...

Among theater people, there might be reasonable suspicion of  English majors, particularly when it comes to evaluating productions of classic plays. With Shakespeare, literary study of the texts threatens to treat theatricality as secondary. I have fought against this tendency in me because understanding the Shakespeare canon as literature is the overwhelming focus in the classroom. I never had a teacher who concentrated on Shakespeare as theater. It's  always helpful to remember that the Bard was a man of the theater who never took the trouble to have definitive texts published, necessitating the First Folio and keeping centuries of scholars occupied ever since. That's enough throat-clearing to get into this account of how I took in "King Lear" on opening night in an IndyShakes production at Taggart Memorial Amphitheater in White River State Park .   It's clearly the job of anyone seeing a new production who has read the play to interpret production decisions. T...

A treasured album's cover, not much worse for wear You don't have to be a trombone player except in fantasy to enjoy a trombone-heavy jazz band, especially if your record collection includes "Jay & Kai + 6."  That's a Columbia LP from the 1950s with a marvelous cartoon by the great Arnold Roth on the cover and co-leader Kai Winding's name spelled two different ways, because "Kai" is not really pronounced "Kay," but publicists must have liked the rhyme cementing  the Danish trombonist's hit partnership with J.J. Johnson. It was Johnson who of course was the greater innovator on the brass instrument in jazz, and it doesn't require being from his hometown of Indianapolis to proclaim this. But whether as a duo or in this record's assemblage, Winding was a simpatico partner in tandem with J.J., and an excellent arranger as well.  At the Jazz Kitchen Sunday evening,   Naptown Trombone Collective paid tribute to the trailblazing ...

As with many  who exile themselves with distinction from a provincial upbringing, the curiosity that fed Janet Flanner's writing career was nurtured in the world she left behind. Before she was dubbed "Gen ê t" by New Yorker magazine founder-editor Harold Ross, she carried the prestige of a well-established Indianapolis family, a talented daughter who got a brief start in journalism here as movie critic for the News. She came out as a lesbian after a likewise brief marriage, then settled in the French capital, where her "Letter from Paris" was a regular feature in the well-written and -edited, and eventually well-heeled, magazine. "They Call Me  Gen ê t ," D. Paul Thomas' lively, variegated interpretation of the New Yorker' s European correspondent for a half-century,  takes Janet Flanner off the glossy page as so much more than a prestigious byline. As an extended "au revoir" to Paris set in 1975, it brings the thorough, exacting rep...

 "We Walk Beneath a Patient Sky," the substantial new work opening Dance Kaleidoscope' s final program of the current season, shows the result of a rare collaboration between a choreographer and a composer both active here. Jordan Munson blends his affinities for electronic music and the Appalachian musical tradition in the new work, against which Joshua Blake Carter has set his arresting choreography. He's tamed his characteristic abruptness of movement to focus on how a community establishes ritual and secures a common acknowledgment of meaning and values. Seen Saturday night at the Toby, the four-part work embraces a fresh vision of the hero's journey theme, but applied collectively more than individually. Robed, hooded, backs to the audience and unindividualized at first, the company of a dozen dancers comes to grips with the forces they must contend with, reaching up, arms sometimes hooping the air above them, also thrusting downward at an angle with motion...

Trumpet Mafia in full cry, with leader Ashlin Parker second from left. An open weekend date on the Jazz Kitchen schedule is not easy to find, especially on short notice, so John Raymond was grateful to have nailed one Friday night while Trumpet Mafia, an ensemble from New Orleans, was nearby and open to a further opportunity for its high-powered blare. Raymond, professor of jazz trumpet  on the faculty of Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, spoke proudly of his impresario role in securing the gig, in which the mafiosi included some of his students plus young Indianapolis trumpeters of professional stature Sam Butler and Kent Hickey, plus a well-established jazz educator and trumpet guru, Scott Belck of Cincinnati.  Anchoring the front line were New Orleans trumpeters Ashlin Parker and Bijon Watson. All told, there were 11 trumpeters ranked along the front of the Jazz Kitchen bandstand. It became a decent dozen at the end, when Indianapolis native Pharez Whitted was in...